


death as a fetish

by starspecters



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Car Accidents, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Minor Character Death, Minor Violence, a lot of death discussion and actual death so like. be careful, human!taako, still reaper!kravitz
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-28
Updated: 2016-12-28
Packaged: 2018-09-12 20:29:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,442
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9089542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starspecters/pseuds/starspecters
Summary: “Thank god I won’t die from it though, right, Krav?” And he kinda snorts a little when he says it, laughter threaded into his voice like he’s just so amused by himself, and Kravitz resists the urge to pinch the bridge of his nose.
--
Or, Taako breaks and Kravitz heals and heals and heals. (This was not meant to be part of his job description.)





	

**Author's Note:**

> really quick before you read, i wanted to give a fair warning that Kravitz meets Taako when he's fairly young in this fic although no interaction occurs until late-teens, and nothing romantic happens until much later than that. if that is something that would bother or upset you, please do not read this! take care of yourself <3 thank you!

Taako is six the first time he dies.

Kravitz finds him then; his body, broken and folded like a paper crane in a car accident, parents quickly bleeding out behind and under the shattered windshield. It’s silent, even with the blaring car alarm, even with the sirens in the distance -- these are not sounds Kravitz bothers tuning into. He, the conductor, the orchestrator, can only listen to the death rattles around him right now, shallow and leaky, sucked through a straw with a hole poked in it and -- 

Pauses.

Years of plucking souls out of carcasses passively, like violin strings, like harp chords, and this is the first time he pauses, hand hovering over the trembling bird-cage bone ribs of the restless unconscious child below his palm. The parents have already given up somewhere to Kravitz’s right; they push towards him eagerly in a gentle nudge, cats awaiting affection, and with another hand, he has already reaped their souls out of their bodies. With another hand, Kravitz has reaped a newborn child in Austin, Texas, has reaped a war veteran in a retirement home in Oregon at the same time, but here his other hand stalls, deathly still, wavering and unable to make the final tug.

_Leave him,_ Istus hums somewhere to his left -- behind him, next to him, in his head. _We trust your intuition._  

He nods. He thinks, _I’m sorry._ He thinks, _I do not know why this is so hard._ His hand trembles. A not-quite-breath catches in his throat, thick and unyielding, and he swallows for the first time in years.

_Shh. Leave him,_ she repeats. _Come home_. 

He nods again. Life magic is his antithesis in every way, but he attempts it anyway, cuts a string from his orchestra with his baton and threads it through the boy’s arm like an IV. 

“Goodbye,” he says awkwardly, tongue uncooperative with disuse, as if he can hear him, as if it’s enough of an apology for the weight of two souls under his arm and a shoddy attempt at giving him new life.

 

\--

 

The next time, Taako is fifteen. 

In Kravitz’s life, this nine years is both nothing and everything. In Kravitz’s worldview, Taako is both nothing and everything. 

There is a kitchen fire. 

Kravitz’s usually does not bother with the details, but in this instance, he does; an aunt, cooking in the kitchen, cradling a bottle of wine and wearing long, striped socks that extend to mid-thigh, and Taako, wide-eyed and doey, wearing the same stockings and makeup and looking up with a sort of dewy reverence. She loses her balance -- hits her head on the counter with a _crack!_ and shatters the bottle against the stove, and everything goes very _wrong_. 

Because Kravitz is early, he sees all of this with his own eyes. Because Kravitz is early, he sees Taako focus on him briefly, a millisecond before the fire, and -- maybe that’s what it was. That’s what had made him different. He could see him.

But it doesn’t matter for very long. In Kravitz’s life, this millisecond is both nothing and everything.

The kitchen catches fire, a veritable tinderbox, goes up like a box full of wood chips, and this time, Kravitz does not wait for the okay.

He pulls him from the fire. He mends with newly learned magic he did not expect to actually use, and hums something long-forgotten under his breath as he does -- a lullaby his mother sang to him, or the Raven Queen, or both.

He leaves a mark because he is both kind and cruel. A burnt reminder in a line across his palm -- a scar, or perhaps, a shallow crosshatched line to join the others _(head, heart, life life life)._

 

\--

 

Seventeen.

Back alley of some city street, knife burrowed somewhere around those same bird-cage bone ribs -- rough and crude in all the ways Taako is not, has turned soft in the hips, hair, mouth, sharp in the eyes, tongue, nose.

He sees Kravitz because he arrives early, before he has bled out, which Kravitz has done despite knowing this would happen. Foolishness is a learned trait; he studies it in the scars around Taako’s knuckles and ankles, finds himself infected with it like a contagious thing. 

Thick eyelashes fluttering at him, dark and lined and smudged. “Long time no see, bubbale. And here I was thinking I had imagined you up.” It is the first time Kravitz has heard him speak, and the hundredth. Somewhere to his left, he has already seen Taako’s entire life played out for him like a home-video compilation. 

But that Kravitz is out of his reach, for now. In this moment, he is anchored, tethered to reality with nothing more than the look Taako gives him and the strange gravity in his chest. In this moment, he says, “You can keep thinking that, if you want.”

“Not a chance, my dude. You’re staying real, and you’re even gonna sit that fine ass down next to me and keep me company while I die.” Taako shimmies up against the brick wall like he might on a bed of pillows, looking entirely too aloof for someone bleeding out before him. He glares archly at Kravitz, then looks pointedly at the ground next to him.

Kravitz sits down.

There’s an almost silence then -- a semiquaver rest, like an disingenuous invitation for him to speak that’s all formality -- before Taako plows on. Kravitz is unsure if this impatience is something born from near-death, or if he’s always this brash; these are not details he normally tunes into, but he’s curious despite himself.

“I guess this is where I ask a bunch of questions.” A put-upon sigh. “Like, ‘who are you?’ or ‘why me?’, but… fuck that.”

Kravitz tilts his head, curious. Always curious when it comes to Taako. Always a lot of things when it comes to Taako. “You don’t want to know?”

Lifting one shoulder lazily, Taako simply stares at his fingernails. “I can take a pretty good stab -- hehe -- at most of it, my dude. Things die, and you waltz in. I can see you, others can’t. Badda bing, badda boom, hot stuff. Can’t seem to die, but hey, who am I to look a gift dead guy in the mouth?”

Relieved, although still completely out of his element, Kravitz settles primly against the wall next to Taako. “Then why do you want me here?”

“Sheesh, what’s with the third degree? Can’t a guy just share his final moments with another fine lookin’ dude? You’re here anyway.” His breath is becoming shallower now, Kravitz notes idly. Without trying, he can hear the heartbeat to his right slowing with every second. “Would like to know your name, though." 

Kravitz tucks a smile behind his hand. It’s been awhile since he’s done introductions. “Kravitz.”

“Gesundheit.” Taako winces. “Kidding, bad line. Mine’s Taako.” He collapses onto Kravitz’s shoulder, which is entirely unnecessary, but he doesn’t mention it. Life spills out of Taako in fluctuating bouts, and the city bustles around them, but Kravitz listens to nothing but Taako, breath stuttering and hiccuping out of him. “But you can call me anytime.” 

A beat. 

Winces again. “Wait, fuck, those were shitty last words. How about…?” Trailing off, Taako looks up at him, low-lidded and cadaverous. “Wanna grab a bite sometime, bone boy, Krav, my man guy?” Grins in a way Kravitz _thinks_ is supposed to be seductive. And dies in Kravitz’s arms.

He’s shocked for a moment. Pauses. But then he’s laughing, bright and ancient, glass hit with a tuning fork, and he can’t remember the last time he laughed like this, from his belly and full of air, and he can’t remember the last time he heard his own name spoken over the sound of a beating heart.

Kravitz pushes back Taako’s hair with a hand, still smiling, and heals him with a gentle fingertip brush.     

 

\--

 

Twenty.

“We’ve _got_ to stop meeting like this.”

Kravitz rolls his eyes. “Then stop _dying_.” The ocean tide pushes past his boots, past his ankles, and drifts back without leaving a single drop on him. Taako, though, is soaked and looks to the world like a hurricane had its way with him, hair tangled but still somehow miraculously flattering. He poses on the shore in a way Kravitz guesses is supposed to look casual. 

“I forgot how to swim.”

“You _forgot._ ” There’s a sunburn on the tips of Taako’s ears that Kravitz finds himself distracted by; his eyes keep dragging over to the spot, and he wonders what the skin there feels like.

“That’s what I said.” Taako drags his fingers through the sand and finds a pair of shades, pink and obnoxious and very obviously _his_ . Pops them on coolly -- or a poor imitation of it, considering his current windblown, sandy state of being. “It’s this _weird_ thing that happens when guys don’t go out for some fine dining with ole Taako.”

Humming, Kravitz smiles slightly without meaning too, and it’s such a rare thing that he brings his fingers to his mouth to trace along the bow, cataloguing with his fingertips. He says, “I haven’t been human in a long time, but I’m pretty sure that’s not healthy.”

“Thank god I won’t _die_ from it though, right Krav?” And he kinda snorts a little when he says it, laughter threaded into his voice like he’s just so _amused_ by himself, and Kravitz resists the urge to pinch the bridge of his nose.

Instead, he ignores Taako’s jab. “Three years is a pretty large waiting period. I’m flattered.” Kravitz sits, feeling awkward just standing around. The sand doesn’t stick to him. The wind glides around him without touching his hair or the fabric of his cloak -- sitting down doesn’t end up making him feel less out of place, even though no one can see him but Taako.

“Oh, I was done waiting after a few _months_ , darling.” Sniffing, Taako turns his face skyward, seeming offended but not. Kravitz hasn’t been friends with a mortal since… since he was _alive_ ; the way Taako emotes, all smoke screens and funhouse mirrors, is still a bit difficult for him to grasp. “Everyone’s after _this_ hot bottle babe, but I figured, _‘hey, death dude’s probably just looking for a bit of an older man, so I’ll give call him up in a few years if I still dig.’_ ” 

“This is ‘calling me up’.” Deadpan. 

“You didn’t exactly give me your digits, my man.” Nonchalant.

Kravitz shakes his head, indulges in the pinching-his-nose whim this time. “I’d hardly call you an older man.”

And then suddenly Taako is close, very close, and Kravitz has never been this close to anyone while they were conscious and _alive_ , and he can hear Taako’s heartbeat, strong and steady for the first time Kravitz has heard, and he feels his body heat from proximity. Taako’s arms cage his thighs, somehow having crawled over to him in a blink of an eye, face both much too close and much too far from Kravitz’s own.

“So you’d be interested if I was?” Winks over exaggeratedly, mirth peeling off along the corners of his cat-mouthed grin.

To Taako, Kravitz is rendered speechless for a second, eyes wide and flustered. To the rest of the world, death stutters, for just a moment -- two towns over he reaches for a girl sinking into a lake, in Barcelona he reaches for an elderly man who took a tumble down one too many stairs, and everywhere death itself blips out for .00003 seconds before resuming. All deaths, just one beat off, and Kravitz shudders. 

Taako giggles sharply, angular and un-pretty, and pushes himself away. “Kidding, handsome! _Breathe_ \-- or whatever your equivalent is. I’m just messing with you.”

Stiltedly, still reeling, Kravitz abruptly picks himself up off the beach shore, wondering why he feels so thrown, doesn’t understand what it is about Taako that makes him different -- that kept him from letting him die fourteen years ago, five years ago, three years ago, this past hour.

When Taako tilts his head quizzically, Kravitz wants to say, _‘I feel like I know less than you do about any of this -- the saving you, the inability to drag you into the afterlife.’,_ or _‘what happened to you to make you value the company of Death so much? Why does loss continue to follow you?’,_ or _‘Sometimes my chest shakes when I speak to you and it feels suspiciously like the hiccup of a heartbeat, like when I pull someone from their body minutes before their body finally stops, and it’s dead but trying so hard to imitate life. I don’t know what I’m doing, and I’m sorry’._

Instead, he says, “I have to leave, Taako. Business.”

Taako blinks, thrown a bit off kilter. “Alright, alright, I hear you, Skeletor. No need to clam up on me.”

Kravitz nods, rips through the air with the scythe he conjures absently, but Taako grabs his hand before he goes through. “What if we made… a deal?”

Interest piqued, Kravitz turns to eye Taako, cautious and slow and curious despite himself. Always curious with Taako. “A deal?" 

“A wager, even.” A smile, slow and wide and hooked at the corners, and eyelids drawn low.

In front of him, the rift swirls something dark and heavy and menacing to anyone but himself, and to his right, Taako _simpers_ , a player with a hand full of aces. Kravitz does not often consider himself a creature of free will; he simply does what must be done, doesn’t really think, and he’s… _good_ at that. He doesn’t act against what he knows, but with Taako...

With Taako, it’s different. With Taako, everything is different.

“I’m listening.”

Taako isn’t really a beaming type of guy, but Kravitz hears his lungs inflate quickly, hears his blood rush, sees the twitch at the corners of his mouth, barely perceptible under his coquettish demeanor. He lets go of Kravitz, instead extending his hand lazily in invitation for a handshake. “If I go five years without dying, you’ll have some winin’ and dinin’ time with everyone’s favorite Alive Again Boy. I’ll cook, even, all classy and shit.” 

Humming, Kravitz rubs his mouth thoughtfully -- and it’s weird, that he almost feels warm, for once. “You think you can wait that long?”

“ _Fuck_ no. I’ll still be taking this --” Gestures to himself “-- blessing of all creation for a spin around Lover’s Lane in the meantime, my man, but I’m keeping this option open as _hell_.”

Snorting, Kravitz reaches towards Taako’s hand. “Fair enough. A kiss to seal the deal, then?”

Eyes widening momentarily, Taako flushes and coughs a little before managing, “Yeah, duh, thought that was a given. Practically in the terms and agreements, and all that jazz. Should’ve read the fine print, homie.” And closes his eyes expectantly.

Kravitz fluidly slips Taako’s hand into his, brings it forward, and brushes his lips against Taako’s fingers gently. “I’ll see you in five years, Taako.” Stepping through the rift, he tosses a wave over his shoulder, where he hears Taako yelping.

“You’re really cold, jackass!” Then, after a moment: “It’s a date!”

The rift sews back together, and Kravitz mulls over a fleeting feeling he does not recognize. “Yes. I suppose it is.”

 

-

 

Four years pass. The sad thing is, they almost make it.

 

-

 

Twenty-four.

Over four years after Taako and Kravitz’s deal, fifty-five in months, 1,612 in days, Kravitz sees Taako again -- alive, but…

At the beginning of the mission, he had not thought to check the details. A long time in the business of reaping has taught him that compassion just makes the job harder, and that rule applies doubly so for mass deaths. 

Forty people, it had said. That was all Kravitz knew. 

He arrives on the set of a cooking show. The lights overhead are harsh, unforgiving in the way they reflect against the vomited blood on the tiles, food and plates spilled across it like islands in a red sea. Coolly, detached as possible, Kravitz starts cutting the soul out of each body, footsteps light and precise, blood never staining or even touching the leather of his shoes.

It’s on victim twelve that Kravitz finally notices Taako.

He’s hunkered under a counter, fingers dragging down his face messily over and over, elbows up to his ears and knees to his chest. His apron is half taken off, but caught in his messy plait, and he seems to have abandoned the cause or simply doesn’t notice anymore.

Whimpering. Kravitz notices he’s whimpering -- hyperventilating too -- and he’s ashamed it took him so long to notice Taako’s heart stuttering and tapping out in staccato _prestissimo_ not ten feet from him. Brushing dust off his knees that wasn’t there regardless, Kravitz rises and drifts towards Taako, feeling nervous in an unfamiliar way.

Unsure of what to say, Kravitz sits. 

Minutes pass. He finishes reaping the bodies with an absent hand.

More minutes pass. Kravitz does not bother much with time, but he believes around twelve minutes have come and gone without his presence even being _acknowledged_ , and for one selfish moment, Kravitz is _afraid_ , feels a foreign fear that slicks his gut and throat and everything in between with an iciness that both chokes and binds him, afraid that Taako somehow lost his ability to hear or see him or-- 

“I don’t--” Taako stutters, fingers grasping weak and useless at his chest. “I don’t understand.”

Guilty in his relief, Kravitz sighs unnecessarily. “Taako--”

“I’ve done that recipe a thousand times; it’s my _specialty_ , there’s no way this could have happened, I -- you can bring them back…?” Uncharacteristically uncertain. Shakes his head and clutches Kravitz’s lapels, desperate and wide-eyed. “Bring them _back_ , Kravitz. I know you can, I know you can bring them back -- you’ve brought me back, I know you can, just _bring them back_ \--” 

“Taako, I can’t.” He presses his palms onto Taako’s hands, grips them loosely.

“ _Fuck_ you, Kravitz, _fuck you_ . I _know_ that’s not true don’t fucking _lie_ to me!” Wrenching his grip away, Taako starts shakily rising, hands flattening over each surface he grabs like rediscovering a room through only touch. “Don’t you understand? _I_ did this! This was me! This was all on me, on your playtoy Taako! I poisoned these people with _my_ cooking, and I don’t even know fucking _how_. And do you know what that means?” Teeth gnashing, Taako laughs, sharp and harsh and ugly and human, and points a finger at Kravitz, who begins to rise.

“This is _your_ fault! If you would have let me die just _once_ , if you hadn’t wanted to fuck around with some human just because he could finally see you, just because you were too fucking _lonely_ to let go of the one person who might be able to entertain you, forty people would still be alive! Forty people in exchange for your amusement, Kravitz, how is that _fair?_ ”

Kravitz’s chest heaves without his command, and everything feels wildly out of control, somehow the least powerful person in the moment. Pained and desperate, Kravitz instinctively reaches for Taako, not knowing what else to do. “Taako, _please_ \--”

“Don’t _touch_ me,” Taako wheezes, shuddering and halting like a ramshackle carousel trying desperately to re-animate. “I killed them.” And his voice is suddenly a whisper, weak and resigned and not at all Taako.

He crumples, and Kravitz catches him before he hits the floor. He doesn’t struggle.

“There’s a balance,” Kravitz says after clearing his throat, talking just to talk, doubting anything is actually processing in Taako’s mind right now. “One person kept alive in all my centuries? That can be overlooked. But forty -- or, rather, forty-one -- would be an impossibility. I’m truly sorry, Taako.” 

Silence.

“I can _possibly_ , however, tweak things a bit. Just so you don’t have to deal with real-world repercussions for tonight's events. You probably won’t be able to salvage any of your reputation, but no one will think to blame you for these deaths.”

More minutes pass. Kravitz briefly thinks that this is the longest he’s stayed in one place and moment in many decades.

Taako’s body remains deathly still -- and Kravitz would know -- but he says, voice hard, “Do it.” And that’s that.

Knowing when he’s overstayed his welcome, when the handful of minutes he has spent with Taako does not amount to being able to provide comfort in presence, Kravitz nods and rises, placing Taako on the nearest counter like a child, but he doesn’t protest. “I’ll be in touch, Taako.” Slices through the air before looking over his shoulder one last time.

Taako says nothing, but his face starts to crumble. Kravitz leaves before the first tear falls.

 

-

 

Twenty-four.

Again.

Taako is passed out already when he arrives, and Kravitz has seen too much… carnage in the past to blanch at the sight, but he does hesitate the barest fraction as he slips into the room, nearly tripping over his feet as he kneels on the bathroom tile. 

No jeer about forgetting to swim this time, he thinks.

Kravitz allows the blood to touch him, for once, slippery on the bathtub, and he grabs Taako’s hand -- nothing more. Unsure of where their boundary is anymore, too scared of overstepping, even when the other wouldn’t be cognizant.

Swallowing tightly, he brushes his mouth against Taako’s knuckles, watches wrist wounds close up slowly and stays just long enough to see breath begin to stutter out of him again.

“Sorry,” he says, and how human Taako has made him become, to entertain the notion of speaking to empty air.

He leaves before Taako’s eyes flutter open.

 

-

 

Twenty-five. 

The gap is both nerve-wracking and relieving, worried over Taako’s state but assured in his knowledge that he is alive.

Kravitz doesn’t visit him because… Because. A list of reasons, rationalities, miles long but still seeming weak and flimsy under the truth of it all, the gravity of the situation.

He doesn’t see Taako because he is afraid of what he’ll see. 

Kravitz is closer to him than he has been to another, but it is within this gap of time that the lack of real, organic _warmth_ in their relationship seems daunting, an unconquerable wall that bars him from trespassing into Taako’s life.

Nonetheless, a tug and pull later, and visiting Taako he does.

Better. That’s the first thing that comes to mind, that Taako looks markedly _better_ \-- although it’s hard to get much worse than the last time he saw him.

Kravitz is outside the party, although no one else could see him if they tried. The death he had been here for, an unrelated next door neighbor that passed in her sleep, took seconds to handle, something he does three times every second of every day for the last however many years, but he’s stuck still glancing at Taako through a frosted window like some sort of creep or an undead that can’t enter without permission from the home’s owner.

It strikes him, then, that he _is_ undead _,_ sort of -- that standing outside with plaster and glass and wood between them is fitting almost, the gap between them vast and physical and _unbearable_ . He thinks, _life is rather fickle, isn’t it?_ And he remembers the way Taako had begged him for something he could not provide, the way his eyes had already worn underneath the strain of ghosts that were practically an everyday occurrence to Kravitz, the feeling of his dead weight, his dead weight, his _dead weight_ \--

Taako sees him, right as he’s turning to go. 

Kravitz finds some excuse to stall while waiting around on the porch; the front door opens within the minute.

When he turns, Kravitz sees Taako and all his changes in full force -- the bleach blonde hair, messy underneath his hat, the new length, the wine glass tilting precariously between his fingers. A mouth full of words he wants to say, and Kravitz finds himself speechless.

Taako, it seems, is under no such spell, and it reminds him of that time in the alley -- their first real conversation -- how his brashness proved to be permanent, just as much part of who he is as his name or his predilection towards dying. He says, “If you’re here for one of my friends, I’m not gonna be happy.”

Following Taako’s aimless gesture, Kravitz sees someone broad and exuberant loudly hooting after (what he assumes must have been) a rousing game of _Wii Sports_ , carrying a boy on his shoulders and high-fiving a shorter man. He raises an eyebrow.

“Tell anyone I said that and I swear to _fuck,_ I’ll die every goddamn day just to annoy you.”

“I’m not here for anyone you know, don’t worry.” He catches himself smiling and suddenly turns a bit more somber. “Taako…”

Taako raises a hand sharply, rolling his eyes. “Look, Krav, I’m gonna spare you the feelings shit. This girl, June, she works for the sheriff or whatever, and hey! Turns out none of it was my fault! Consider it all one-hundo-percent forgotten and forgiven, and -- _especially_ \-- anything that happened after.” He titters, bottom dregs of wine sloshing around uncertainly in the glass, but it sounds hollow and a bit broken -- a bit relieved, too. A bit human.

Shifting uncertainly, Kravitz mumbles, “Still.” No words follow.

“I know.” A small quirk at his lips, a touch pitying, a touch ‘ _what can you do?’._ Something particularly amusing apparently happens inside, laughter loud enough to bounce and reverberate and leak into the outside air, where Taako is shivering. It must be cold. Kravitz doesn’t feel it.

“So,” Taako says after a long pause. Uncertain for only a second, before it’s all familiar lowered eyelids and coy flashes of teeth. “I know I didn’t _exactly_ win the wager, _but_ \--”

“Yes, Taako,” Kravitz sighs, exasperated and flustered and a bit touched, a bit warm, a bit _human._ “I suppose I should invest in a cell phone, then? It’d be a shame if you had to get all bloody before _every_ date.”

Lashes fluttering. “You’re assuming there will be more than one? That’s a bit presumptuous, pal.” But he’s already produced a glittery pen from god knows where.

“As long as you can afford the long-distance.”

 

-

 

Taako is six the first time he dies, and somewhere upwards of seventy the final time he dies -- if you can call it that. 

( _“You think boss-man will let me change the company uniform to be a bit less… bleak? This whole black, billowy robe thing is_ so _not Taako.”_

_Exasperated, even now, even after all these years. “I’ll put in a good word for you, dear.”)_

**Author's Note:**

> i have like 4 other taz WIPs how did it come to this. find me on...
> 
>  
> 
> [twitter](https://twitter.com/Iunarinterlude)  
> [tumblr](http://mort3mer.tumblr.com/)


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